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The puritans were central to the development of the American Literary tradition. For the most part the American character has been shaped by the moral, ethical, and religious convictions of the puritans.

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The observations of life Europeans were recorded in Spanish and French. This opened a “New World’ that focuses on their dreams and desires of an era. The explorers give special importance to America's resources, peacefulness, hospitality, and the promise of unlimited wealth.

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There were Native Americans long before Europeans showed up. They came over and discovered meanwhile the Natives were migrating back and forth for generations. Their cultures and history are preserved today.

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Deists believed that people were inherently good and that God was available to all people. The Universe was orderely and good.

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1. The First Migration: Ice Age Travelers

“By the 1490s, when the great wave of european exploration of the Americas started, numerous groups of American Indians were living all over North America.”

“What’s important to remember us that there were people here when the europeans arrived in the fifteenth century; descendants of those people are still here, and their traditions remain.”

“People first migrated to North America from twenty to over forty thousand years ago. When the first Europeans arrived in the fifteenth century, American Indians were living in diverse societies spread across the continent.”

-emphasizes the importance of the Native Americans presence before the europeans arrived

2. The Europeans Arrived: The Explorers

Cabeza de Vaca: A spanish explorer who landed on what is now the west coast of Florida but never returned back to hs ship. De Vaca and his crew wandered in the Texas gulf area for eight years and recorded all of their findings. He recorded the lives of all Native Americans such as what they ate and how they interacted with new people. All of his recordings were in spanish much like all other explorers from the same area. When he met various Natives he was either a captive or companion.

3. The Puritan Legacy

The “first and most famous” group of English Puritans to land, came in 1620, on the tip of Cape Cod. Some ten years later, seven hundred more came to New England. By 1640, there were at least twenty thousand English Puritans who settled onto the new land. American character is solely based off convictions of the Puritans; like moral, ethical, and religious aspects.

4. Puritan: Refers to members of Protestant group that started around 1560, that wanted to “purify” the Church of England.  They wanted to return to simpler worship and church organization like in the New Testament. Religion was an inner personal experience for them. They were persecuted, some were put in jail and whipped, or their noses were slit and their ears lopped off. Some Puritans moved to Holland, but feared they would lose their identity as protestants, so led by WIlliam Bradford they left for the New World in 1620.

6. Puritan Beliefs: Puritans were certain that Adam and Eve's sin had damned most of humanity and that God sent Jesus to earth to save certain people. They didn't know how to tell if they were saved or damned. They believed that if you were saved, you would feel God's grace within you and you would become a saint. Because of this, the Puritans tried to behave like saints (diligent, temperance, simplicity, self-reliance) in order to be saved.

7.

Puritan Politics: Government by Contract

→ Covenant/Contract between God and humanity

Useful model for social organization (believed people should freely agree with their governments)

EX: Mayflower→ Mayflower Compact (outlining government)

→ Prepared ground for American constitutional democracy

“Saintly Elect” were big influences in government, so their politics were a little undemocratic

Little room for compromise

EX: Witchcraft hysteria in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692→ fear that community’s moral foundation was threatened and also political cohesion in danger.

8.

The Bible in America

Puritans read the Bible as the literal word of God, and attempted to connect their own lives to it, as they saw their own lives as pilgrimages to salvation.

Education was essential to Puritan culture as you had to be able to read the Bible and construct theological debates, thusly they created the Harvard Divinity School, a place to train Puritan ministers.

3 years later they bring a printing press to the Colonies to print Bibles for the masses.

Puritans also kept journals and diaries as their beliefs required them to note all spiritual occurrences, inside and out.

Section 9- The Age of Reason: Tinkerers and Experiments

The Age of reason began in Europe with philosophers and scientists in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  They called themselves rationalists, who were a group of people that believed that human beings can arrive at truth by using reason rather than things like religious faith.  They believed that God’s special gift to humanity was reason.  The idea of experimenting and scientific tinkering were already thriving in the American colonies.  Sir Isaac Newton was a rationalist.

5. The Salem Witchcraft Trials

Two girls began having fits and the doctor diagnosed it as bewitchment.

2 unpopular women and a slave were the first accused of witchcraft

Tituba confessed in hopes of saving her life, this led to the witch hunt because she convinced them that there were more witches.

Cotton Mather's thought this meant that this meant Massachusetts was holy because the devil was targeting them. Wanted witches to face severe punishment.

Several hundred people were accused and 19 were hanged.

Causes may have been mass hysteria, a restricted government, or a strict society.

Mostly women between their 40 and 60 were accused, independent, and posed a threat to men

10.Smallpox plague

Cotton Mather was interested in natural science and medicine. He was a strict Puritan Minister.

Cargo ships brought sugar, molasses, and the Smallpox virus

Smallpox was a big problem like the AIDS virus today

Smallpox wasn’t a thing in North America so the natives did not have an immunity for the virus

Mather tried to find a cure for the virus.

Boston opposed the experiments because the methods were borrowed from the Muslims

In november Mathers house was bombed

Mather succeeded in curing nearly 300 people

The next year only six people died.

Almost six thousand people contracted the disease about eight hundred and fifty people died

11. Deism are basically Good?

Puritans and rationalist discovered god through the natural world.

Puritans believed god would reveal himself only at a particular time to particular people.

Rationalist believed that God had made it possible for all people at all times to discover natural laws through their God given power of reason.

Deism believed that the universe was orderly and good. They stressed humanity’s goodness and the reasoning in people. The best way of worship was to do good for others and they avoided supporting a specific religious group. Everyone could perfect themselves in society with the gift of reasoning.

Many founders of the American nation were deists and they wanted to improve people’s lives.

The American’s struggle for independence was justified by appeals to rationalist principles. The declaration of independences arguments are based on people, God, natural law.

12. Self-Made Americans

Most literature in the Age of Reason took place in reality and was intended for practical or political reasons

Age of pamphlets

Most famous piece from the Age of Reason was Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography

Autobiographies were already popular among Puritans but he took out the religious justification

It told the development of the self-made American which is a model that has been used in literature ever since

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Puritans were certain that Adam and Eve's sin had damned most of humanity and that God sent Jesus to earth to save certain people. They didn't know how to tell if they were saved or damned. They believed that if you were saved, you would feel God's grace within you and you would become a saint. Because of this, the Puritans tried to behave like saints (diligent, temperance, simplicity, self-reliance) in order to be saved.

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Puritans believed that people should enter freely into agreements concerning the government.They believed the saintly "elect" should impose great influence on the government, so their views tended to be undemocratic. This led to little room for compromise.

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In the Puritan town of Salem, two girls who are accused of messing with "malicious magic" spark a series of witch hunts throughout Massachusetts. Many "witches" were hung or put in jail. Historians say that this could be the cause of Puritan society repressing the New England Colony under its strict conditions.

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The Puritans were Protestants that wanted to purify the Church of England. They wanted to return to simpler worship and believed that worship was a personal experience. They did not want clergy or government acting as an intermediary between them and God. They were persecuted in England, so they left and lived in Holland, but moving to the New World proved a better solution because they got to keep their English identities. In 1620 a small Protestant group led by William Bradford headed to the New World where they established New England.